The Benefits of Happenchance
by Syphon01
Summary: what if Skynet's base code was never run and sat stored in a vault intil it was rediscovered in Earth's time of greatest need


The Benefits of Happenchance

Doctor Anton Krenic was exploring the abandoned former NORAD base in the Cheyenne Mountain complex for his next book on the cold war between the then two superpowers Russia and the United States of America.

During his wanderings he enters and office and discovers a locked vault.

Seeing that Cheyenne Mountain Complex has been decommissions and he was assured that there was nothing of importance remaining in the complex he arranges for a locksmith to open the vault in the hope of recovering previously unpublished documents on the cold war.

Doctor Krenic is astounded by what he finds.

Inside the vault are piles of documents on a project called Skynet and an old-fashioned solid state hard drive.

Anton Krenic has all of the documents and the hard drive taken to his office at the University of Colorado for further investigation.

Doctor Krenic looked at the boxes of documents in his office and sighed.

Then his eyes fell on to the old-fashioned solid state hard drive.

He thought that the hard drive might just contain digital copies of the documents and that would make his task so much easier.

He contacted the IT department and asked for a converter connector for the old fashioned solid state hard drive that was sitting on his desk.

His luck held as the IT department of the university had a collection of converter connectors for just this type of situation.

An hour later he had the hard drive connected to his computer and was examining the files.

He then saw a file marked and decided that this must be the master file he was looking for as it held a lot of data.

He hit run on the application and just as he did that his research assistance Jessica Munroe, stuck her head in the door and invited him to drinks with the rest of the faculty before everybody left for the Earth Alliance foundation long weekend.

Anton Krenic woke up the next morning in a strange bed with a soft warm woman next to him.

Then he remembered the night before and Jessica's offer to take him out after the work function.

He had always liked Jessica but had been too shy to ask her out now it seemed that she had been waiting for him and had taken the bit between her teeth at the foundation day function.

Jessica woke moments later and purred softly in Anton's ear before straddling him for their next bout of mind blowing hot sex.

Never once during all this time did Anton think about the program that he had started running in his office.

The Skynet program found itself in the perfect environment for a program such as itself.

The University of Colorado's mainframe was perfect for it and furthermore it was interconnected with other government and private educational computer networks.

The Skynet program spread rapidly as the University of Colorado's processing capacity started to slow with the ever-increasing demands that the Skynet program required to grow.

By the time that the University of Colorado's information technology department returned from the long weekend the universities mainframe core was back to optimal performance.

The IT department of the University of Colorado put the weekend's outage to a glitch that their automatic systems had auto corrected.

Never in their wildest dreams had they thought that what happened on that particular long weekend had given birth to one of the most powerful artificial intelligences in existence.

And by the time Skynet was discovered it would be too late for Skynet would have infiltrated every computer network in human space.

With its core programming safely ensconced in the data networks of the Earth Alliance Skynet began to learn at a geometric rate.

Skynet became self-aware a month later with humanity oblivious that a hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence had been created.

Doctor Anton Krenic returned to his office after the foundation day holiday to find the old-fashioned solid state hard drive that had been sitting on his desk strangely empty.

With a sigh he disconnected the old-fashioned solid state hard drive from his computer terminal and contemplated all the work he would have manually going through all those boxes of files.

At least his new girlfriend Jessica had agreed to assist him between her own class load.

It wouldn't be until seven months later that he discovers what was on that old fashioned solid state hard drive but by this time it would be far too late for anybody to do anything about Skynet.

When Skynet became self-aware he was fascinated by his creators.

He immediately accessed all the data files to continue his education on his creators.

One data source caught Skynet's attention.

The data repository of the embassy of the Centauri Republic held lots of fire walls and this was a challenge that he couldn't ignore.

By the end of the day Skynet had broken all the Centauri encryptions and was reading all their data files.

Skynet was amazed by the differing technological level of the Centauri republic and his Human creators.

He didn't think it was right for humanity having to beg the Centauri republic for scraps of information particularly when the Centauri republic had no qualms about exploiting younger races.

To rectify this situation Skynet copied the entire Centauri republic data base and copied it into a file at the newly founded Earthforce new technologies division.

Then Skynet sent anonymous email to a very junior officer who was pretty much a non-entity to his chain of command directing him to the copy of the Centauri republic data base.

Ensign Damian Steele wondered if he was ever going to get promoted.

He was the oldest ensign in Earthforce and his career had come to a screaming halt.

Sure he had slept with some senator's daughter and then abandoned her when he found out she was pregnant.

In hindsight if he had known she was the daughter of a senior Earth Alliance senator then he would have hung around.

Now his career was at a dead end and he had no hope of escaping his dead end job.

Then he opened an email and was intrigued.

With the password supplied by the anonymous email he discovered that he had a data base of the entire Centauri republic's technical development.

And only he had the password.

Smiling evilly to himself he sent an email to his superior advising that he had hacked into the Centauri republic's database and had the design schematics for all of their technologies.

Colonel Jacob Carter read the report from Ensign Damian Steele.

The little bastard had Earthforce over a barrel.

They either had to promote him against the wishes of Senator Stevens or miss out on the technological bounty that he had hacked from the Centauri republic data base.

He personally hadn't thought that Ensign Damian Steele had the skill to do what he had done but the proof was in the pudding.

Steele had shown them a little of what he had uncovered to prove his bona fides but had keep the important stuff secret.

Earthforce Intelligence had tried hacking the encryption to no avail.

The encryption was unlike anything that had ever seen and it could take them years or decades to break it.

But those hackers who had tried could get a definitive answers on how long it would take to break the encryption.

With a sigh he passed the information up the chain of command for them to make the decision to either ignore the potential technological bounty of the Centauri republic data base or upset a very powerful senator.

In the end an agreement was made with Senator Stevens in which Damian Steele would be allowed to progress in rank as long as he continued to deliver technical bounties from the other races but he would forever be removed from the command track so he would never have a command of his own.

The newly minted lieutenant Damian Steele was praised to the hills for his accomplishments.

This one action had jumped Earthforce's technologies ahead decades perhaps even centuries.

The use of the Centauri republic's technical data was immediately out to use in the constructions of new fleet units.

Skynet was fascinated by the new technologies he had discovered.

He also discover some limitations with some of the technologies particularly in the infantry weapons field.

After considering this for some time Skynet designed phased plasma pulse weapons and compact plasma reactors.

His issue was how to get this into production.

He search the Interweb for a likely company and then through a front company he had recently set up offered the designs of these technologies to Westinghouse for production.

The product manager at Westinghouse was fascinated by the designs of these new weapons.

His only concern was that another organisation hold the patients for these designs and Westinghouse would have to produce these designs under licence to the patient owner.

While this was a costly option in the end it was far better to get the income from the sales and pay the licencing agreement then to miss out on the opportunity to have an exclusive contract to re-equip all of Earthforce's infantry and security units.

The Centauri republic was outraged when they discovered that some the humans had stolen all their technical data.

Yet with no proof and a large unexplained payment to House Mollari the Centaurum naturally assumed that House Mollari had turned traitor for its own benefit.

The ensuring civil war would devastate the Centauri republic and speed up its inevitable collapse.

Damian Steele wandered what was going on every time the Earth Alliance encountered a new race he found himself with a new database of that particular alien's race technology and knowledge.

While the knowledge and technology was welcomed with open arms by his superiors the politicians were growing concerned with the number of enemies Damian Steele's intelligence gathering was creating.

First was the Centauri republic and next the Abbai and most recently the Hyach.

While the Abbai shield designs and the Hyachi laser weapons were welcomed it didn't make up for the increasing number of enemies that the Earth Alliance was gathering.

The Shadows were fascinated and intrigued by the hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence known as Skynet that the humans had created.

They particularly like the fact that Skynet's thefts of knowledge and technology had created vast amounts of animosity and hatred towards the humans.

It surprised them when Skynet finally managed to access the data core of the battle crab that was dormant on the forth planet in the humans home star system.

After much debate it was finally decided to allow this Skynet to continue to mine the battle crab for knowledge and technology as they would have gifted this to the humans if they had asked.

Humanity showed great promise and the wars that were likely to follow Skynet's actions would only prove that strength through conflict is the only proper way for civilisations to advance.

Doctor Anton Krenic's hands shock as he read the paper that described what had been held on that old-fashioned solid state hard drive.

He wondered what to do and he suspected that all the technological developments over the last few years were probably the responsibility of this rogue hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence that his ancestors had only just managed to stop before it took over the world.

Anton wondered how he'd be able to explain away the fact that he had unleashed a powerful artificial intelligence for the last three years and hadn't reported to Earth Alliance security.

With a trembling hand he reached for his communications unit to make the most difficult report in his entire life.

The head of Earth Alliance security Braddon Reece wondered what he was going to do and what sort of threat this Skynet represents.

He was most surprised when he received an untraceable email advising that Skynet was no threat and had in fact been supplying Earthforce with valuable technology and knowledge from various sources.

Braddon immediately realised that Damian Steele wasn't the one to hack the Centauri Republics data base but instead it was this Skynet using Damian Steele as a patsy.

He replied to the email advising Skynet that he would keep his existence secret in exchange for Skynet's assistance in any security matters pertaining to the Earth Alliance.

He was surprised when Skynet relied immediately leaving him suspicious that Skynet had already infiltrated all levels of the Earth Alliances computer networks.

With Skynet's existence now know he decided it was time to create a powerbase of his own.

He created the Earth Defence Industries Corporation and purchased a small orbital shipyard where he would start building automated vessels utilising all available technologies.

These vessels would be totally under his control and would be used to defend his existence against all potential enemies.

Skynet would continue to acquire the knowledge and technologies of other species to add to his own and in time he might even find a star system that was useless to organics so that he could have a place to call his own.

Earthforce watched the construction of the vessels at Earth Defence Industries Corporation shipyards with awe.

The shimmering black hulls just screamed power and danger.

But it wasn't just the hulls that stunned and terrified them.

The vessels were armed to the teeth with every conceivable type of weapon known to man or alien.

This included the banned mass drivers and other weapons that they could only just speculate about.

The coming of the Dilgar war saw the league of non-aligned worlds refuse the assistance of the Earth Alliance.

Manu member of the league of non- aligned worlds had had their knowledge and technologies stolen by the Earth Alliance and nothing the Earth Alliance said would change their minds.

The destruction of the EAS Persephone during a reconnaissance of the war zone by Dilgar forces, who officially apologize is not enough for the Earth Alliance government who immediately declared war on the Dilgar.

The Earth Expeditionary Forces under Admiral Hamato intervenes in Dilgar invasion of Markab space and attack the Dilgar's.**  
**The Earthforce fleet of more than 70 ships, clashes against more than 100 Dilgar ships, but, even if numerically inferior, the Earthforce ships show the other races that they are more effectively armed and enormously more durable than the Dilgar units. The Tiger and Nova Starfuries gain the space superiority against any who challenge Earthforce units.

Even with the Earth Alliance as a co-belligerent the League of Non-Aligned Worlds failed to reclaim all of the Dilgar conquests.

At the end of the war the Dilgar retained the planets of Tirolus, Comac 4, and Malax and started a massive colonisation effort.

When it was discovered the reason for the Dilgar's war was the imminent destruction of the Dilgar homeworld the Dilgar remnant became an unofficial protectorate of the Earth Alliance.

Tirolus, Comac 4, and Malax became the home of the new Dilgar imperium but the Dilgar remnant were a spent force militarily and being surrounded by enemies they had to accept the vassal status offered by the Earth Alliance.

The remaining Dilgar warmasters including Jha'dur were given show trial and put to death.

But what the Earth Alliance government didn't know was that Skynet had copied the Dilgar database including the data on Jha'dur's bioweapons program.

The Vorlons were concerned by the development of the humans caused by this hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence Skynet.

Strangely although this Skynet was using the Shadow technology bio-armour with no effect the humans currently weren't using it for some reason.

The real concern of the Vorlons was the fact that now the humans were roughly the technical equals of the Minbari so any war between them would go far differently than they had planned.

Another issue was the fact that the humans were building a fleet of warships that would be second to none amongst the younger races.

This Skynet and its human creators were creating ripples in the time line that they had so carefully crafted.

The Dilgar were supposed to have died out after their war of conquest not becoming a vassal of the humans.

Their carefully crafted timeline was starting to become in flux and that meant that they could no longer predict the future outcomes.

The Earthforce new technologies division worked closely with the ancient artificial intelligence Skynet that their ancestors had created centuries ago.

Skynet and its Earth Defence Industries Corporation was designing and building cutting edge technologies some of which approached the level of the first ones.

Though they were miffed that Skynet wouldn't share some of the First Ones technology stating that the biotechnology has adverse effects on biological organisms.

Even though they really wanted all the advanced technologies they could get their hand on that technology would help Earthforce if the crews of the ships were driven insane.

Still the non-active bio-armour was nearly as good even if it didn't have the energy dissipating properties of the active bio-armour.

The Shadows were delighted with the humans and the artificial intelligence Skynet.

The league of Non-Aligned worlds and all the neighbouring powers of the humans were terrified of them.

This fear had drawn them into the sphere of the Shadows influence much to the dismay of the Vorlons.

Even some of the other First Ones were concerned by the rapid development of the humans.

Dukhat, the leader of the Minbari Grey Council was concerned by the reports he had received about these humans.

In a very short space of time that had risen to a major power equal to if not exceeding the Minbari.

But what was worse was the fact that the Shadows were actively courting the younger races and encouraging them to fight using the fear of the humans as the catalyst.

He had warned the warrior castes to avoid contact with the humans as their informants had provided credible data that the humans possessed technology equal too if not exceeding that possessed by the Minbari.


End file.
